June 16th. I had an evening appointment with the surgeon who operated on my knee. For the first time, he was pleased with the progress I was making. So, with a titanium and cobalt spring in my step I made my way to the former Dubliner for a celebratory pint of Lagunitas. Imagine my surprise when I saw the umbrellas tied up and all the outside tables and seating gone. The doors were locked and, peering through the windows, all I could see were tables with chairs piled on top of them. I went to the nearest pub, Ζύθος, and asked if they knew what had happened; they didn’t. Not being fond of the beers on offer, I moved to the next pub, Beer O’Clock, where the barmaid told me she thought it had gone out of business a week or so before. Like me, some puzzled frequenters of the Dubliner had also repaired to Beer O’Clock on finding the Dubliner shut.
Sources say that Harat’s (the new name of the Dubliner) have declared bankruptcy, owe rent, and have not paid their staff.
From the start, it was obvious that the new owner was making a lot of wrong moves. In a WhatsApp message to the previous owner, I opined that not only had the new proprietor destroyed the business, but he had also destroyed the soul of the pub. My son and I went there in mid-May to meet an American who’d come to our session in Arhegono a few days before. We were the only customers inside the bar, and only a handful of punters were sitting outside.
Three missteps come immediately to mind. The first was a (supposedly) funny notice at the back of the bar, visible to anyone sitting or ordering at the bar. It said that anyone sneaking in their own drinks could “fuck off”. It was obvious the notion of φιλότιμο was unknown to the proprietor. Greeks would not stoop so low. If short of cash, they will slowly nurse a beer or two for the duration of a football match, but they won’t be carrying a hip flask.
The second wrong turn was, I feel, cancelling the sessions. This was compounded by the puzzling fact that he was willing to keep the group. The former cost nothing except a drink on the house; the latter cost money plus the legal situation of paying and insuring musicians was becoming increasingly difficult. One personal theory that I hold is space. As a band, we were crammed onto a tiny stage, whereas – looking back at old photos – the session tended to take up quite a lot of space – as many as four or five tables. The solution was simple. If diners needed a table, Ken would always ask us to sit closer together. It wasn’t rocket science, but this might not have occurred to the new owner, who might have feared the loss of two or three groups of diners. Sounds silly but that’s my theory. He might also have failed to appreciate that the session musicians were also customers with friends and family. So if ten of us were playing, our camp followers could be as many as fifteen.
The picture below is from St. Patrick’s Day, 2022.
Finally – and of much greater importance than session or no session was the name. Harat’s had no currency in Greece. The name is also uncomfortably close to χαράτσι (haratsi), an oppressive tax that non-Muslims had to pay their Ottoman rulers. The Dubliner, moreover, was well-known in Thessaloniki. Even people who had never been there knew about it. It also had good online exposure. I think Harat’s should have taken a leaf from Wetherspoons’ book and kept the original name, as in: The Dubliner – A Harat’s Pub.
Our our last gig: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UEbKWD96Ik
I had always hoped that we’d get a chance to play there again, but that hope has now firmly gone. We now have – quite literally – closure.
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